It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman wearing a skirt or dress at this time of year will need to wear tights. Except, it's not. It's a truth universally acknowledged everywhere except in glossy magazines, on red carpets and in newspaper fashion pages. (Also, in certain towns in the north of England, but that's a whole other issue.)

There is a fundamental disconnect between fashion and the real world when it comes to hosiery. Walk down any urban street in winter, and you will see a forest of black-opaqued legs. But scan any fashion page and you'll see winter clothes styled, more often than not, with bare legs. The shoot might be on location in the Highlands in a rowing boat on an icy lake, the coat might be fur-trimmed and the dress cashmere – but the legs, more often than not, will be bare. Mea culpa: even on a page such as this, which is all about how us norms grapple with fashionable clothes, I often end up being photographed in bare legs when roadtesting winter looks. Bare legs are fashion's shiny prefect badge (see also: shoulder robing your jacket; using a clutch in daylight).

As a result, we are in dire need of style guidance in the wearing of black tights. There is a woeful paucity of role models in the important skill of teaming a 60-denier opaque with an interesting outfit. So, when we wear a coloured skirt with black tights, we go for the easy option of a black or neutral top. But it doesn't need to be like that. A simple way to make black tights work is with strong colours: if you team muted pastels with a matt-black leg, it kills the subtlety, but add gleaming jet-black to a jewel-like mix of emerald, sapphire, fuchsia, ruby, well, then it is right at home.

The same goes for what you wear over your outfit. That black cardigan you always wear? On the fashion food chain, it is scarcely a notch above your dressing gown, and you don't wear that out of the house. Sorry to be blunt, but it needed saying. A black cardi will make coloured clothes and black tights look dull, so try a navy or charcoal blazer instead.

Go on, try it. It's time for fashion to reclaim the black opaque. And as you can see, I'm in.